Years ago, computers were isolated devices that did not communicate with each other. But, computers are increasingly being connected together in networks. One use of this connectivity is for a technology called Video on Demand, which provides real-time and near real-time audio and video transmission over networks at times requested by viewers. One example of Video on Demand is called IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), which provides television programming over the Internet.
Video on Demand is increasing in popularity, and its growing customer base is straining the traditional computing, storage, and network architectures that support it. In addition, as the quality of the video content moves from the traditional TV format to HDTV (High Definition Television), more network bandwidth is needed to support even the same number of customers. For these reasons, systems which distribute video content must be able to do so with ever-increasing speed and efficiency.
The Video on Demand technology uses a client device (e.g., a set-top box) at a customer's location to receive video or TV frames from content servers connected via the network. A control system mediates requests between the customer and the content servers. Existing techniques require a high degree of communication between the customer, the control system, and the content servers. This communication increases the computational load and subtracts from the network bandwidth available to transmit the video content. In addition, existing techniques do not adequately facilitate providing video on demand when the video originates from multiple content servers, e.g., one content server providing the video the customer requested, another content server providing advertisements, and yet another content server providing reports of severe weather, emergencies, or important news.
Thus, what is needed is an enhanced technique for the delivery of on-demand audio/video data in a network.